


follow you (drag me through hell)

by scifis



Series: the end of all things (a whisper) [4]
Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Kevin-centric, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25543933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifis/pseuds/scifis
Summary: Time is a concept none of them can really grasp anymore. It takes an eternity until Juyeon’s eyes meet his, and then Chanhee’s.“I should find a way to make usbibimbap, then,” Juyeon says, and it’s sad but it’s a joke, his kind of joke, and Changmin erupts in laughter again.
Relationships: Choi Chanhee | New/Ji Changmin | Q/Lee Juyeon/Moon Hyungseo | Kevin
Series: the end of all things (a whisper) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735195
Comments: 22
Kudos: 78





	follow you (drag me through hell)

**Author's Note:**

> hi! it’s been a while, but i’m finally here with part four of this series :D before we begin, i want to say thank you to everyone who’s read the past three (and even if you didn’t, it’s okay. thank you still)! it means a lot. i hope you find this one a good enough ending :) 
> 
> \+ special thanks to luci for validsting me and being an amazing friend and. (do you even read the notes? i wonder) i love you! 
> 
> \+ title from “follow you” by bring me the horizon. there is a brief mention of a knife fight/blood somewhere in the middle, not enough for a tw but please be careful! sorry for any mistakes!

(It happens quite like this: 

A Canadian walks into a bar in the middle of the apocalypse — except it’s a liquor store, and the apocalypse has just started. There are still people on the street during the day and screams during the night, a vivid “Please, don’t leave me here!” he remembers hearing that rings on his ears. In the bar, liquor store, there is someone his age buying what looks like apple flavoured soju — except there is no one at the register, so the stranger looks more like a thief.

So, really, it happens like this: a Canadian walks into a liquor store after the news say it’s safe to go out during the day, there’s no way he can turn this into a joke, and the guy in front of him has pitch black hair on top of his head and apple flavored soju in his hands.

His name is Juyeon, and he greets Kevin warmly despite everything else going on outside, and his clothes are clean, and his backpack looks lighter than Kevin’s. Suddenly, all at once, there is a lot to take in. 

Kevin remembers there is an adequate response to someone telling you their name. At least, for now, he thinks, there still is.

“Nice to meet you, Juyeon. I’m Hyungseo.”)

The stairs aren’t safe enough for them to actually access the second floor without being afraid of getting hurt, so the two sleeping bags the four of them carry around are thrown into the ground. It looks like a living room. There’s no TV or couch, but it looks like a living room.

They eat silently, like they always do. Chanhee says something about craving _bibimbap_ , (the words “I miss _bibimbap_ ” leaving his mouth while they share two cans of beans are so funny to Changmin, he stops eating to let out a bubble of laughter) but the silence holds their hands and drapes itself over them like an old friend — Kevin would mind, on normal days, but he’s been on his tiptoes for hours now and all he wants is to shut his brain down and put both his soul and body to sleep. 

Chanhee looks at him and the edges of his eyes are prettier than Kevin remembers them being. There is an easy smile on his lips, glued to him like it’s been tailored.

Time is a concept none of them can really grasp anymore. It takes an eternity until Juyeon’s eyes meet his, and then Chanhee’s.

“I should find a way to make us _bibimbap_ , then,” Juyeon says, and it’s sad but it’s a joke, his kind of joke, and Changmin erupts in laughter again. 

· 

His stomach hurts from how hungry he is, but there is nothing he can do about it. Kevin sighs. It’s dark outside, has been dark for hours now, but his eyes won’t close, _can’t_ close, not when he knows that besides Danger there are people out there who are made of everything evil, too. Not when he fears them the most. Not when he has to live, and make sure the other three do, as well. 

Changmin calls for him, “Kevin,” curving around the middle consonant, and it hits close to home. He knows he’s supposed to be strong but he is so, so weak.

(“I call them Danger, in my head,” Changmin whispers to him after one of his nightmares, one night. “The monsters. I don’t know much about them except for the fact that they are dangerous, so—Danger.”

“It fits,” he answers. Kevin pulls his lips into a smile. He has no reason to, but Changmin is opening up to him about something and feels like a victory somehow, so he smiles. “It fits.”)

“What do you miss the most, out of everything?”

The boy besides him has big doe eyes, but they aren’t open. His words are slurred like speaking takes too much of his energy, and Kevin can relate to that. 

“Bubble baths,” he answers Changmin, “and music.”

Changmin hums. His limbs are spread out on the floor and he’s not really awake when he holds Kevin’s hand to his lips, kisses it softly. With the way his eyes flutter closed, he’s probably thinking about going back to sleep instead of keeping the conversation going, and Kevin imagines what it would be like to lay his head on Changmin’s chest and fall asleep to his heartbeat.

(The first few nights, Kevin learns about silence. He gets close to the big window on his living room and glues his face to it. 

He can’t see anything outside because the stars are probably dead, or scared like he is, so they don’t come out a lot. So it’s dark. So he listens, listens and listens — there’s not a single noise to be heard.

So Kevin grows quiet, just to match.)

“I used to sing all the time,” he tells Changmin, probably out of loneliness. _I can listen to you and I hope you can listen to me as well._ “My family loved my voice, so I sang for them. I guess I miss that, too.”

“I also love your voice. Sing for me.”

It’s more of a hum than anything, and it’s more secretive than it needs to be, hushed and whispered as to not stir Juyeon and Chanhee awake, but Kevin does, and Changmin closes his eyes again with an upward curve on his lips to accompany. 

· 

(Kevin gets into his first and only fist fight at age eleven and a half. 

A group of boys at school had been mean to one of his classmates, and he couldn’t understand why even after looking back on it a few years later. Eleven and a half years old Kevin knew people on the TV threw punches around all the time while looking cool, so he tried the same and ended up with a broken leg. He promised to never start anything like that again.

Kevin gets into his first and only knife fight at age twenty-two.

It’s not much of a fight, actually. Happens so quickly he could swear he imagined it, hadn’t it been for the bloody knife on his hands. Chanhee screams when the guy who tried to run away with their backpacks falls to the ground, still alive. 

Kevin feels the phantom pain of a broken leg as a memory comes back to him, rips out the hem of his t-shirt and asks Juyeon to help him with a makeshift tourniquet so the cut on his arm can stop bleeding. He keeps all of his promises, so this wasn’t something he’d started.

They leave in a hurry, grab whatever they can before the guy wakes up, and Kevin pretends he doesn’t have nightmares about it probably for the rest of his life.)

Yellow curtains, old and dusty, separate his face from the direct sunlight coming through the window. Kevin sits crisscrossed on the floor and waits for Chanhee to wake up so they can have a conversation about whatever comes to mind. It’s so easy, talking to Chanhee. And Juyeon. And Changmin. 

The other two left for a supply run, they call it. Checking the houses around the one they’re staying in for canned foods and water and new clothes.

A simple pink sweater hugs Chanhee’s delicate frame as he sleeps, pout on his lips and soft snores leaving them from time to time. Kevin likes these little moments the most, when he’s the only one awake and can watch over whoever’s with him for a little while. It makes the breath coming into his lungs easier to welcome, brings a certainty for something they can’t be certain about.

“You’re staring,” Chanhee says.

His cheeks turn pink. His heartbeat settles for a constant rythm against his ribcage, trapping him in. _Thump, thump, thump._ Kevin doesn’t take his eyes off of Chanhee’s, because it would be pointless for him to.

“We have granola bars now,” he answers instead, and waits for Chanhee’s smile to bloom. Pink hair and all, Chanhee climbs into the space between Kevin’s legs and throws his arms around his neck.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

This is something he dreams about often and, like his nightmares, probably for the rest of his life. Mornings when he’s Hyungseo and twenty-two and has people who kiss him softly like he means the world to them, and he kisses back because they mean the world to him, and everything is okay for a while.

· 

Inside, he finally closes the door and inhales heavily. The darkness surrounding them is unnerving even after all these months, and Kevin’s never run so fast in his entire life.

Five more minutes outside and the two of them would probably be dead — the sky holds no moon that they can see because they can’t see anything outside. It’s dark, and they had been careless, and Kevin wants to punch Juyeon but he knows it’s his fault, too, for getting caught up with stupid chocolate bars and different types of candy in a convenience store mostly intact. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Juyeon breathes out, and Kevin feels like that, too. “We’ll meet them in the morning. I promise.”

Rage fills his whole body. Not at Juyeon, never at any of the boys, but at the world. At the end of it. Kevin wants to say _fuck it_ and open the door and leave and run to where Changmin and Chanhee are staying, four or five blocks away from them, alone, and wants to so bad his hands shake at his sides.

“Hyungseo, look at me,” it’s not an order, but he does — Juyeon looks as stressed as he is, and he shows Kevin the palms of his hands, waits for any kind of protest, finds nothing, before pulling him into a hug. “We’re gonna meet them in the morning.” He repeats.

“I love you,” Kevin whispers back at him. “The three of you. I love you so much. I want them to know.”

Tears don’t come even when he wants them to. Even when he wants to bawl his eyes out like a little baby for being an idiot. The chocolate sits heavy on the pocket of his hoodie, and it hadn’t even tasted good, if he’s being honest. 

“I love you more than I could explain, Hyungseo. Chanhee and Changmin, too.” Juyeon holds him with an arm thrown around his middle and a hand on the back of his head, fingers through his hair. It’s more comforting than it should be in their situation.

“We’ll find them in the morning,” he says for the third time, and Kevin believes him.

Time slows down as they lay on the floor. It’s dirty and dusty and uncomfortable but Kevin makes Juyeon turn around so he can rest his head against the older man’s shoulder blades, so it doesn’t matter.

Juyeon smells like a mixture of the cheap soap they’ve found somewhere and sweat. And like Juyeon, which is something Kevin never really understood before the apocalypse — how people just have their own scent, how people just smell like themselves when you get close enough.

Morning comes and they haven’t said anything, but haven’t slept, either. They wait for the sun to get a little stronger before leaving; it’s probably seven something o’clock when Juyeon opens the door and sprints down the street, Kevin trailing after him in equal speed. 

Down the block, Kevin can see two men running towards them, and his chest grows in size until it spills from his eyes. The tears he wanted during the night fall like they’ve been trapped for too long.

No one screams, because screams never happen anymore, but it feels like someone should – when the four of them meet in the middle, when Chanhee’s arms wrap around him, when he hears the heartwrenching sob Changmin lets out as Juyeon hugs him. 

They don’t say the obvious, _We thought you had died_ , but Kevin whispers “I love you” against Chanhee’s neck first, and “I love you,” against Changmin’s forehead after, and that is obvious too.

He prays for a God he doesn’t believe in for them to never leave. Looking at Juyeon’s eyes, he fools himself thinking that they won’t, if only for a second.

As awful as it is to make promises he’ll probably break someday, that night, when Chanhee moans a string of _I love you_ s into his skin and Changmin bites at his lips and Juyeon holds him in place, Kevin swears he’ll stick with them until the end — of what, he doesn’t know.

· 

(“Hyungseo,” Juyeon whispers to his back, “you’re awake, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. What is it?”

“Nothing.” Juyeon’s hands travel to his shoulder, pressing Kevin against his chest. It’s broad and comfortable even when the bed they’re on creaks agaisnt their shared weight. “You’re too stressed. Sleep. I’m here.”)

Kevin eats two spoonfuls of beans. It’s enough for the hour, and Changmin needs more food than he does, so he lets the younger have the rest of the can they’re sharing. He ruffles Changmin’s hair and stands up.

Every nerve in his body is on edge, like usual. He doesn’t know when he’ll stop worrying about things. Kevin tries not to think, and eventually ends up thinking too much.

(“A composition about sunrises? You’ve never even seen the sun.”

Kevin looks at Eric sitting across from him in their shared small table, eyebrows arched, expressionless. His iced americano tastes horrible. He doesn’t even like coffee, but Eric is paying, so he’d chosen the cheapest option in the menu.

“It’s true, hyung!” The boy continues. “You go to sleep at five in the morning every day!”

“I can just paint my room, then,” he thinks out loud. “On the days when I forget my window open, or something.”

“That’s... creative?” It’s not. Eric tries too much to be a good junior, has never treated Kevin like an equal even after two years of friendship, even after Kevin says he doesn’t mind not being called _hyung_ or worse _, sunbaenim._ Sometimes Kevin wishes he would just speak his mind.

He sighs, “It sucks. I have no ideas. I’ve never even seen the sun,” and Eric laughs.

Bitterness greets his tongue when he takes a sip of his drink again, and he thanks Eric once more before leaving the small café and walking quietly to campus by himself. There are clouds blocking sunrays, and Kevin thinks he prefers it that way. 

He likes it better when it’s dark.)

“A good morning kiss,” Chanhee wakes up and stretches his arms high in the air, makes grabby hands at the ceiling. “From one of you. Now.”

Changmin laughs big and full. He looks at Kevin, then at Chanhee, and throws himself over the man laying down on the floor.

A surprised squeal leaves Chanhee’s lips, but it’s quick because Changmin is kissing him in a second.

Juyeon, on the single bed next to them, looks down at the scene fondly. Kevin hadn’t noticed he was awake. “Okay, that’s nice and all, but what about me?” 

Changmin detaches himself from the limbs holding him down, jumps a bit before straddling Juyeon’s lap. They’re both smiling, and it eases the tension out of Kevin’s body just to look at them.

He has a sudden urge to start singing, but stays quiet and lets Chanhee hug him once he gets up. There are little pecks being delivered to his neck where Chanhee buries his head, and his hair smells funny and like Chanhee, because that’s the way it works.

Kevin orders his body to relax, to go limp and let himself be held. “We could do nothing today,” Changmin says from the bed.

“We do nothing everyday,” Juyeon answers him. “I was thinking about a picnic on the backyard. How about crackers and granola bars, juice if we’re feeling fancy?”

They laugh and it gets easier to breathe. The sun gets stronger behind the curtains, Chanhee stretches his hand out to play with the light, still hugging him tightly. 

“I love you,” Kevin says to no one in particular, to all of them, to the sun. 

“I love you, too,” the three of them answer in the same beat. It makes him smile and the nervous energy in his bones settle for a comfortable hum instead. 

(“Rest, Hyungseo,” Chanhee says against his lips. It’s late, and they’ve just stopped making noise, and he’s as tired as Chanhee is but–

“Rest,” Juyeon says against his bare shoulder, behind him. “We’ll be here in the morning.”

Changmin walks through the door with a new shirt on and smiles at the three of them in the bed. “Can I even fit in there?”

No one answers him, but Changmin tries really hard, pressing against Chanhee’s back until he’s settled. 

He reaches for Kevin’s hand after a lifetime, after Chanhee and Juyeon’s breathing has evened out, after his eyes have been closed for seconds or minutes or hours. “Rest, Kevin,” he whispers in the air between them.

So Kevin does.)

**Author's Note:**

> writer’s block has been a bitch to me. this is softer than i intended for it to be, but it’s kevin and he’s. Soft.
> 
> if you’ve read it all, thank you so much, once again. i hope it was enjoyable! i’ll come again soon with something else that i hope you enjoy, too! <3
> 
> \- levi


End file.
